Hearing Specialist Advice: Keeping Your Ears Clean
Hearing Specialist Advice: Keeping Your Ears Clean
SoundLife Hearing Technologies is dedicated to your hearing health. Whether you’re looking to see a hearing specialist for hearing aid fittings, repair, or a check-up, we’re here to help. However, your hearing health is more than visits to a hearing specialist to help with hearing impairments. It’s also about looking after your ears and keeping them healthy, especially if you’ve yet to experience any hearing issues.
While it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll avoid developing hearing issues, properly cleaning and caring for your ears can help. But any hearing specialist will tell you there are a few things you should avoid when keeping your ears clean. In this blog, we offer some advice for how — and how often — you should clean your ears.
How Often Should I Clean Out My Ears?
This might surprise you, but you actually rarely, if ever, need to clean out your ears. While your mom might have demanded it of you when you were a little kid, even forcibly irrigating them with a cotton swab, it’s pretty unnecessary. Your ears can take care of themselves. In fact, the wax that you’re usually trying to clean out serves an important purpose.
Ear wax acts as an antibacterial protective layer. Trying to clear it out can leave you open to infection, or compact it and cause it to block your ear canal. Some people do have excessive ear wax that can cause hearing issues, but only then is there really any need to clean them out. Even then, once a week is usually more than enough.
What Should I Use?
If you have experienced a build up of wax that’s causing discomfort or hearing issues, you can clean them out a few ways. A small amount of hydrogen peroxide mixed with warm (not hot!) water poured into your ear is a typically reliable home remedy.
Just keep your head tilted to one side for a few minutes, and have a towel or handful of paper towels ready for when you tilt it the other way. There are various different home remedies that work in much the same way, but you’re usually better off consulting a hearing specialist.
Can’t I Just Use Cotton Swabs?
No. While plenty of people still do use cotton swabs to try and dig out the inside of their ear canal, it’s a bad idea. Not only are you impacting the wax that’s already there, you’re also risking damaging your ear canal, or even your eardrum.
What About Ear Candles?
Absolutely not. People might recommend ear candles as an effective treatment for ear wax, but it’s always a bad idea. Not only are they ineffective (the “residue” often claimed to be ear wax inside the candle is just burnt material), they’re also dangerous. You run the very real risk of having burning hot debris falling directly into your ear canal. For your own health, stay away from ear candles.
Talk to a Hearing Specialist
If you’re experiencing hearing impairments and are looking for help, talk to a hearing specialist at SoundLife Hearing Technologies today. We can also help with maintenance and adjustments for your hearing aids, as well as consultations and fittings for new ones. Talk to a professional at SoundLife Hearing Technologies about hearing solutions today.